The 1851 Dublin City Census

Compiled and Edited by Seán Magee

•Dick Eastman, Eastman’s Online Newsletter, 10/24/2004

The 1851 Dublin, Ireland City Census on CD-ROM

At last month’s Irish Genealogical Congress, held in Dublin, the Lord Mayor of Dublin helped Eneclann launch a new genealogy CD-ROM entitled, "The 1851 Dublin City Census." Eneclann is an Irish-based company dedicated to releasing Irish records on CD-ROM disk. Their newest disk should prove to be a valuable resource for many genealogists researching their family trees. I had a chance to use this new CD-ROM database this week.

One of the biggest losses to Irish genealogy research was the firebombing of the National Archives of Ireland in 1922 by the IRA. The explosion and subsequent fire destroyed many historical documents, including census records. Later genealogists were robbed of the opportunity to use these census records to find ancestors.

However, prior to the destruction of the census records, Dr. D.A. Chart of the Public Record Office had compiled a comprehensive list of the names and addresses of heads of households for Dublin City as found in the 1851 census. Dr. Chart’s extracted list did survive the firebombing and is available to researchers. This unique genealogical source has now been edited and converted to computerized database by Seán Magee. The database contains over sixty thousand names and addresses (and some occupations) in the city of Dublin. These records are high-quality data: extracted records of original census records with the extraction done by an archivist and records expert.

The installation of the required software was simple. While data on the CD-ROM is viewed with a Web browser, many screens require GrafixView ActiveX. This software was included on the CD-ROM and was installed by Eneclann’s installation routine.
The searches were very simple. I started by looking for the name Thomas Farrell, and the CD-ROM found four such entries. Here is the first one, which shows what a typical Dublin 1851 census entry looks like:

Surname: Farrell
Forename & Notes: Thomas
Street Number: 66
Street: Marlborough St.
Civil Parish: St. Thomas’s
Northside/Southside: Northside

The 1851 Dublin City Census CD-ROM has three search modes: Standard Search, Soundex Search, and Expert Search. Looking at each, in turn:
· Standard Search - This is the most specific way of finding what you are looking for. You may combine your search across the Surname, forename, street, street number, parish and northside/southside fields, or combine searches within each search field.
· Soundex Searching - Most surnames (or family names) can be spelled in a variety of ways. For example, "Smith" can also be spelled "Smyth," "Smithe," and "Smythe." Soundex is a method of giving names sound codes. The 1851 Dublin City Census CD-ROM allows you to enter a surname into the search dialogue. This surname is converted (on the fly) to its appropriate sounded code and the records searched. As a result, you can often find names that sound alike, even though they may have different spellings. Note that this search is run against surnames only.
· Expert Search – A search utility that uses Boolean logic. The Expert Search supports And, Or, Not, Exclusive Or, Phrase, Multiple character wildcard, Ordered proximity, Unordered proximity, Stemming (word form) and Synonym.

All the searches seemed to work smoothly and quickly. Even though the information was displayed in a Web browser, it was searching on my local CD-ROM drive, not on the Internet. I was able to print the results to my printer although there seemed to be no way to "tag" records and later print tens or hundreds of records at once. I was, however, able to "copy-and-paste" from the Web browser into other Windows programs.

I also experimented with the maps available on the 1851 Dublin City Census CD-ROM. These are the 1847 Town Plans of Dublin City. The maps included are the first detailed town plans of Dublin City to be produced by the Ordnance Survey. They are still used today, particularly by cartographers and city planners and developers. These thirty-three maps contain detail of all the streets and houses within the city at this time, a great addition to help users identify specific addresses.

The maps are viewed with a separate program, which you launch separately. If you have enough memory in your system, you can run both programs at the same time. I did find the use of GrafixView ActiveX to view maps to be a bit strange. It does not use the normal Windows commands. In GrafixView ActiveX, you:
Click the left mouse button to ZOOM IN to the graphic (increase magnification).
Click the right mouse button to ZOOM OUT of the graphic (decrease magnification).
Hold down the left mouse button and drag to SCROLL AROUND the graphic.

Once I became used to these commands, I was able to maneuver around the maps easily.
The viewing of maps requires a lot of memory. Eneclann reports that you can view the maps on a Windows 98 system with as little as 32 megabytes of memory, although the user may find the system to be "sluggish." At least 128 megabytes of memory are required to print and will also increase the speed of the program’s operation. I tested the CD-ROM on a system running 128 megabytes of RAM memory with Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 operating system requires more memory for the operating system than does Windows 98, leaving less memory for the application. When I started the 1851 Dublin City Census, I had a number of other programs launched in other Windows, including Microsoft Word being used to write this newsletter. The operation of all the programs slowed to a crawl. I started closing some of the other, nonessential programs. As I did so, the speed of the GrafixView ActiveX map viewer program increased.

Eneclann reports that anyone with less than 128 megabytes of RAM memory can load the original map image files on the CD-ROM into a graphics software package, such as Photoshop. These graphics programs are usually not as memory-intensive as GrafixView ActiveX.

All in all, I was pleased with the operation of the 1851 Dublin City Census CD-ROM. Even the slow operation when viewing maps was a minor annoyance. The primary purpose of the CD-ROM is to find data, and I must say that the data searches worked quickly.
If you have Irish ancestors and believe they may have been in Dublin in 1851, you will find this CD-ROM to be helpful in your research. I would also suggest that every Irish genealogy society and most genealogy libraries will want a copy of this CD-ROM with its high-quality extractions of original census records.

The 1851 Dublin, Ireland City Census On CD-ROM sells for $42.95 (U.S. funds) or €49.90. These prices do not include postage and packing. While the product is shipped from Ireland, you can pay in your local currency by use of a credit card. Eneclann has a safe and secure online ordering page.

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